Club 80-90 Forums

Hi... I've stubbornly tried to fix this without having to post on here, but I think I'm beaten

I've got a 1985 1.9 petrol T25, and I've had an intermittent electrical fault for the past 2 weeks. Off to France soon, so need to sort it. Whilst driving I've twice lost my electrics (wipers & indicators). I've stopped, restarted and all has been fine. Today I reached for the Haynes and decided to fix the fault. Battery terminals all good, wiring behind the ignition all seems good, fuses and relays all seem good. I then checked the engine bay and behind the coil I found a thin red wire that just pulled out when I moved it??? It comes from the junction box, but no idea where it should connect too? I've also got a red & blue cable that was rammed behind the coil. One end seems to disappear back into the van, while the other end is not connected. I'm now wondering if the 2 reds should be connected, but I can't find any mention of them in my Haynes manual???

Oh forgot to add... Since finding and pulling the red wire, I now have no indicators or wipers.

Oh and... Since cleaning the red wire, it is now a red/black wire

Any help???

Cheers Steve

Its very unlikely that anything in the engine bay will affect wipers,
Does your blower motor work? Head lights?
I had a problem where a faulty ignition switch caused occasional loss of blower / wipers / headlights.... Engine continued to run.
Temp fix (3 years and counting) sliver of credit card between steering column and ignition switch plug.

T

Being a 1985 - is it the old bullet fuses or newer blades?

Fuses look like bullet type to me...

Just taped up the loose wires and reconnected everything. Started up once ok, then once without wipers, indicator & blower. Then all fine again???

Electrics are lovely aren't they!!!

My Merc has those horrible fuses - anything goes wrong and I just run along them all giving each one a bit of rotation to clean up the contacts. I lost a headlight on the way to the MoT due to this.The tinning on these fuses seems to turn to powder and prevents good contact. The fact that I am only a couple of hundred yards from the sea doesn't help!

Mmmmmm... Think I may have found the root of my troubles. Removed the 16A fuse (wipers, washer & blower) and found this...


Not sure if this is cleanable and I'm not sure why it effects my indicators too, but it certainly looks like something has happened in there!!!

What will have happened is that it corroded a bit and caused a high resistance which led to the heat causing the melting of the plastic. Clean it up and replace the fuse and it should be good to go.

Look at the fuse two below though

That 16amp fuse has at sometime or other been fitted with a higher rated fuse to melt like that. You could either pick up another fusebox, add additional fuses, or go for the headlight upgrade (all in the WIKI) which will free up half the fusebox anyway. I don't have anything that consumes more than 2 amps in my old bullet fusebox now.

The blower and wipers should be seperated anyway. I wrote a 'how to' some years back. See bottom of this page: https://club8090.co.uk/wiki/Co ... eplacement" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

How did I not spot that???!!!

It's been a long day

Yep, those bullet fuses are a pain in the backside. I don't have them on my van but had them on my 300CE Merc. Its worth changing the whole lot as a matter or course as they can look ok but then fall to bits when you move them.